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Eye of the Beholder
Players: DM * DM Kuul Players * Amber Colworn, changeling artificer * Kiln ir'Kavay, changeling artificer * Kitara Bellacole d'Sivis, gnome bard * Tamiyah Athéhsa, shifter monk Notable NPCs * Drago Scrohl d'Medani, vice-chair of the Department of Planar Studies at the Tower of the Twelve. * Māre Ka Keeda, an avolakia working for an unknown daelkyr. * Qhuledax, an ultharid working for the same unknown daelkyr as Māre Ka Keeda. Introduction It’s just another day in the city of Sharn: men, women, changelings, all living their lives in this big, uncaring world. It’s a hot Zol, and the stench from the lower city is wafting all the way up to Storm Tower, the largest airship docking station in all of Breland. The Wayfinders all find themselves quickly hustled onto a privately chartered airship, bound for Atur, the City of Night. Balinor’s Breeze, she’s called, and some enterprising employee has painted air elementals on the side of the ship. Inside, they’re escorted to the dining hall where they see the client: Drago Scrohl. Karrnathi native, judging by his thick brow and severe expression. Human, late forties, clean shaven face and greasy, slicked back chestnut brown hair. “Velcome. You are ze Vayfinders? Good. Zis ship is leaving momentarily, and I vill not be vaiting for any latecomers.” Summary Drago and his undead bodyguard Erebus seats them around the table and tells them that he has hired them for a particular specialty of the Wayfinder Foundation: Artifact Retrieval. They’re to reclaim an item of immense power tied to Xoriat call the Revelation from a long abandoned site in the Ashen Spires of Karrnath. Issue is that his assistant, a Rostan Losho, an Emerald Claw sympathizer, stole all of his notes and has gone ahead to retrieve it. They spend the night in the shrine of the seeker Brother Patches, a warforged cleric sympathetic to the Wayfinders. As they leave the city of Atur the next morning, they must cross through the cold and dreary forests of Karrnath. Upon arriving in the Ashen Spires a few days later, they are attacked by an avalancher, a type of creature linked heavily to elemental earth, which triggers a landslide. They manage to fight it off, but are beset by a pair of pixies which exult in the chaos and destruction that follows it around. Amber kills Tweedledee, the first pixie, while Thiago makes a sorta-friend in the second, Forevertimely. They eventually make their way to the valley that contains the Site that Drago directed them to. They find that the valley has been twisted, the flora resembling melted wax and the stream flows with rainbow water. They find the adamantine and byeshk doors of the excavation ajar. They go through a series of doors and find a man who identifies himself as Quibbleglands Orangefritter. He sees Thiago and pales, claiming to have killed Thiago 30 years ago. The Wayfinders eventually decide to take the clearly insane man with them. They soon find themselves joining him, with Amber thinking herself a warforged and Tamiyah seeing the spectre of Mik’hael, a paladin of the Silver Flame from her last expedition. They delve deeper into the halls of madness, fighting off a minor beholderkin known as a gauth until they come to a mindbending maze room. Orangefritter darts ahead, and is soon lost among the gravity defying room. The Wayfinders make it through and find themselves in a room with three statues dedicated to heroes of the old Empire of Dhakaan. Thiago figures out the riddle, and the statues greet him with the name Draal’thec, a face that he hasn’t worn in more than four years. Unnerved, they press on anyways. Thiago forms the face of Abhasvaras when he’s struck with a particularly potent wave of madness. Abhasvaras is convinced that he is the god of glitter, and acts accordingly. They make it to the bottom of the facility, and Abhasvaras sends his herald, Glitterslime, to investigate the chitinous frame of a small hand mirror that they suspect to be the Revelation. After Glitterslime touches it, however, it swells in size and comes after them, clearly controlled by some malignant force. Scraps valiantly tries to stop it, but the same fell force seizes control of the iron defender and it joins the slime in its attack on the party. The Wayfinders retreat to the room with the statues, and a spectral warrior exits one statue to aid them in their fight against the turned companions. He directs them to return from whence they came, and he promised to seal the facility behind them. They go through the room-maze again, and find themselves in a different corridor than the one that they entered the room from originally.They found themselves talking to a man0sized hare with a hat, and had a pleasant, if unnerving conversation with him. The next room had a tapestry of flesh that called out to the Wayfinders to touch it, feel it, and Amber and Tamiyah fell prey to it. Tamiyah only grew thick fur on her arms, but Amber’s more mutable nature manifested and she grew a pair of gauntlets out of bone. Sufficiently freaked out now and more than ready to leave, they hurry along the next corridor and find that the hallway has magically transmuted into an esophagus of sorts before they all black out. When they awake, they find themselves in a doctor’s office, with a horrifying secretary sitting behind the desk. She proceeds to call them in one at a time to see the Doctor, a inscrutable illithid that actually does heal some of their madnesses before teleporting them to the entrance hall, where they find Orangefritter, who now introduces himself as Drago Scrohl d’Medani, professor at the Twelve and vice-chair of the Department of Planar Studies. The Wayfinders realise that the Drago that hired them must have been an imposter, perhaps the very same Rostan Losho who stole the Professor’s notes. They hurry back towards Atur, the real Drago in tow, but meet the imposter en route. He calls their bluff of having retrieved the Revelation, and a pitched battle ensues. It’s revealed that the fake Drago wasn’t Rostan at all, but an aberrant creature from Xoriat. The Wayfinders flee after it impales Tamiyah and kills her, while Drago recovers her body and teleports away. They reconvene in Korth, where Drago convinces an acquaintance of his bearing the greater Mark of Healing, Kara d’Jorasco, to use Korth’s resurrection altar to bring Tamiyah back from Dolurrh. Conclusion As the Wayfinders flee, the avolakia waves Erebus down. “No, leave them. We learned what we needed. We never expected them to succeed in the first place.” It slides over to the broken homunculous on the ground, still twitching occasionally. “But this… this is more than we could have hoped.” With a beckoning motion, a trio of zombies move over to the worm and throw themselves down onto the inanimate iron defender. The worm raises it’s four fingered arms and begins casting a complex spell. The rotting flesh of the zombies slides off of their bodies, moving onto the livewood in Scraps body, twisting in and through it, fusing with it somehow. It’s eyes flare emerald, eyestalks waving and the same light glows in Scraps’ eyes. It stumbles to its feet, moaning slightly. The bonded necrotic flesh and livewood writhe, splinters slowly flaking out as the flesh consumes the other organic material. Pleased, the avolakia moves back towards the tent at the far end of the field. Ducking through the entrance, it descends down the exposed stone steps from the uncovered crypt, Erebus and Scraps a few steps behind it. Down the stairs it goes, descending hundreds of feet below the surface until it comes to a plain steel door, which it opens. There is a plain stone altar in the middle of the room, and a hunched over figure at the far end of the room, and a wall of zombies along the left side of the room. The figure turns, and a gaunt human male looks at it, a haunted look in his eyes. Coiling around his wrist a long, muscled whip coils restlessly, venom dripping from the end. “And the mission, Māre Ka Keeda?” The avolakia bristles. “That is for the Master’s ears, halfblood. Not yours. You can have Erebus, now, Conner. I have acquired a far more interesting specimen.” A single claw-scythe runs along Scraps’s adamantine side, where it grumbles pleasantly and rubs up against the mucus-covered side of the worm, showing its loyalty to its new master. Conner glares at the worm, but heads off towards the stairs, making his way out of the small chamber. The avolakia tears a strip of flesh off of one zombie and slowly consumes it, savouring the taste of necrotized flesh. It lays a pair of hands on the altar. And an oppressive weight seems to fill the chamber. “Master. The Wayfinders are powerful, yet easily fooled. They can be useful pawns for our purposes. I will await your instruction.” The powerful weight seems to increase, though the avolakia seems unaffected. Scraps, however, writhes as the undead flesh is transmuted into actual flesh, matching that of the avolakia in color. Hidden glands begin to produce a similar mucus that makes the skin glisten in the low light. A quartet of tentacles unfurl from the constructs (?) chest, tips dripping venom. The worm coils, obviously pleased. With a handful of arcane words, it touches Scraps, and the light around it shimmers before an abnormally large wolfhound appears in it’s place. “Perfection.” Conner scowls. Even with the worm's plaything, he knew that he wasn't a match for a group of powerful adventurers like the Wayfinders. That doesn't mean that he likes the role that the Master has picked out for him. Standing beside a shuttered door deep in the Depths of Sharn, he sighs before knocking and entering. A tall, robed figure waits at the far end of the ruined hall, figure cloaked in shadow. The figure rises, it's height extending to nearly nine feet tall. Six long, nearly seven foot long tentacles whisper against its robes, enchantments in the silky fabric keeping the mucus from wetting it. Scorching orange eyes flash as Conner feels a psychic pressure against his mind, verifying his words. The ulitharid exudes sheer confidence as it joins Conner at the door. Drago hums softly beneath his breath as he wanders the halls of the Twelve. Passing by the offices of the Department of Acquisitions, he pauses briefly. "Next time, I shall have to ask Celia to outfit me with a team. She is in charge of the Icecaps Expedition, after all..." Shaking his head, he resumes his humming as he descends the steps to the great library, then beyond into the laboratories. Deep in the offices, he comes to Kara d'Jorasco's domicile. Jars of preserving fluids line the walls, strange shapes hidden by the liquid inside them. He walks in, seeing that Kara is clearly out. A metal box on a desk at the far end of the room rattles once, as he enters the room. "Ah, Claudia. Yes, I am back." He walks across the room, slides the top off of the box and gently lowers his hand into the crate. He tenses, jaw clenched as the muscles in his arm that reached inside the box strain against his shirt and trembles. A few heartbeats later, he removes his hand. Cradled around his hand is a chitinous gauntlet, form perfectly laid against his own hand. Angry red veins stand out on his wrist near the line between chitin and skin, but they quickly fade. He rolls his fingers, refamiliarizing himself with the organic armor, fingers tipped in sharp claws. Tucking his clawed into his pocket, he begins to move to the exit. Halfway there, he sees a picture of a human woman on Kara's desk. Regretful smile on his face, he runs a fingertip along her jawline. "Oh Tamra. Never would Kara have asked that of you. Regardless of your absolutely terrible sense of humour, Claudia is all that I have left of you. I would not risk losing her to anything having to do with Xoriat." With a sigh, he walks away, out of the laboratory without looking back again. End of Eye of the Beholder. Category:Expedition